Chapter Three

Zachery stood at the window long after the car had gone.

The road was empty. The morning was bright. The sea below the cliff had gone from black to gray to a flat silver blue, and he had not moved from the spot. His arms were crossed. His shoulder rested against the frame.

He watched the bend in the coast road where the car had disappeared, as though it might come back around the same curve and return up the drive.

It did not come back.

Something sat under his ribs and pressed there, low and steady. He told himself it was irritation.

He had not slept. He had lain on the covers in his suit with his shoes still on, stared at the ceiling until the gray light came through the curtains, then came in here.

A man who did not sleep was a man who felt things he would not otherwise feel. That was all this was. He had read it somewhere, in an article, in an airport lounge. Sleep did that to people. He did not have the time to be a person who felt things.

She would be back.

He turned from the window with that thought and held it the way a man holds a coin in his fist.

She had nowhere to go. Nobody to go to. No money that was not connected to his name in some fashion. She had spent two years in this house and had made no life outside it. She would be back before dark. She would be quieter than usual. She would either apologize or not apologize, either way she would be at the table at seven.

He had seen her do this before. She had walked out more than once in two years, once in the middle of a dinner party, and every time she had come back by midnight.

She would be back.

He went downstairs.

The house was quiet the way it always was at this hour. He crossed the hall toward the dining room. He did not look at the kitchen door as he passed it. There was no reason to look at the kitchen door.

He had stood in that doorway last night with his shoulder against the frame and watched her drink a glass of water. That was a thing that had happened. It was finished.

The butler came out of the side hall.

Adam was sixty and had worked in this house for nineteen years. He had the kind of face that never showed anything unless it meant to. He stopped when he saw Zachery. His eyebrows moved a fraction, then settled.

"Sir," he said. "I did not hear you come down."

"It is not a large house."

"No, sir." Adam folded his hands in front of him. "You are usually in the car by eight."

Zachery did not answer that. He walked past him into the dining room and stood at the head of the long table. Two place settings lay at either end. Sunlight came through the tall windows. A vase of white flowers had been changed this morning by someone whose name he did not know.

Adam followed him in.

"Shall I have your breakfast brought in, sir?"

"No."

"Very good." Adam paused. "And Madam's? It has been set for four hours. I did not want to clear it without asking."

Zachery turned around.

"Four hours," he said.

"Yes, sir. She is generally down by seven on Tuesdays. I set the table at half past six as usual. It has been waiting ever since."

Zachery looked at the table again.

The second place setting sat at the far end, twelve feet from his own. The napkin was folded into a triangle. The glass was polished. The chair had been pulled out a hand's width, the way it was pulled every morning for a woman who sat down at it, drank her coffee, said nothing, then went back upstairs.

"She is not here," he said.

Adam's face did not change, but something in the way he stood did. He had been in service a long time. He knew when not to ask a question, and this was one of those times.

"Shall I clear it, sir?"

Zachery looked at the empty chair.

"Leave it," he said.

Adam inclined his head and withdrew.

Zachery stood in the dining room alone and did not sit down at either end of the table.

His phone rang in his pocket.

He took it out. The screen said Victoria Alexander.

He stood there and let it ring. He watched the name glow, dim, and glow again, then stop. He put the phone back in his pocket, walked to the window, and it rang again.

He took it out again. Victoria again. He let it ring until it stopped. This time he did not put it back right away. He held it in his hand and looked at the dark screen.

A message came through a moment later.

You are not answering. Is everything all right?

He read it twice. Not long ago , a message like that from Victoria would have been the first thing he answered immediately.

He had waited for her to come back to Aurelia. He had planned around it. He had moved the divorce forward because of it.

He set the phone face down on the sideboard and did not answer.

He walked to the front of the house and stood in the entry hall. Through the tall glass panels beside the door he could see the gravel drive, the trees, the gates, the stretch of coast road beyond them where a black car had turned this morning.

She would be back.

He told himself that just the way he told himself the numbers on a spreadsheet. The way a man tells himself a deal will close because he has decided that it will. He had never once in his life been wrong about a deal.

She had no money. She had no plan. She had a father who would call her the moment he heard, a mother who would call her even sooner.

She had nowhere to go except the homes of people who would ask her questions she would not want to answer. Then he remembered Clara.

She would be back before dinner.

He went back to the study. He sat at his desk, opened his laptop, and began going through the morning's reports.

For the next three hours he worked the way he always worked. His eyes moved to the window more often than they should have.

At noon he checked his phone. There was nothing new.

At two he checked it again. Victoria's message was still there, unanswered. There was nothing else.

At four he stood up and walked out into the hall, past the dining room. He stopped in the doorway. The second place setting was still laid, still waiting. The napkin still folded into its triangle. The glass still polished. The chair still pulled out a hand's width.

He stood there for a minute, then walked on.

She would be back.

He said it in his own head with the same flat certainty he used on the floor of the exchange. He did not let himself hear how many times he had needed to say it that day.

He went back to the study, shut the door, and sat down. His hand went into his pocket, and his fingers closed around the ring.

He took it out. It was a thin band, warm from his pocket, and it caught the light from the desk lamp. He turned it over twice, then put it back.

At seven the table was laid for one. Adam had cleared the second setting without being asked. Zachery ate alone and did not taste any of it. He had never once thought about the woman who ate alone.

At half past nine he stood in the study with the lights off and the window open. The harbor lights were yellow out past the cliff. The road was black.

He took out his phone and opened the app.

It took him a moment to find it. He had not used it in months. He did not check it the way she used to check it.

He had installed it in the first year they married because she asked him to, and he had opened it twice, and then forgotten about it.

The map opened and loaded.

The little gray pin that was supposed to mark her location was not there.

He refreshed it. Still nothing. He moved the map across the city, then out to the coast, then back again. The screen stayed empty. There was no pin anywhere on it.

He stood in the dark study with the phone in his hand and the ring in his pocket.

For the first time that day he could not think of a single thing to tell himself.